Welcome back to the New Thinkery. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend, Alex Priow. How are you, Alex? Doing well, man.
How are you doing? Great. You know, I can't, we were going to keep this from the audience, but I love the new look at the New Thinkery. It's just two of us.
Yeah. That's great. We dropped a deadweight and I know that Greg has his contingent of fans, but he did something, you know, I don't want to tell any tales out of school, but he did something that we can say transgresses the law of nature. Yeah.
He got monkeypox that holds fashion Yeah, very much so. And Alex and I, we make a lot of jokes, but we have moral red lines, and we're just those type of gents. Yeah. Yeah.
Moral gents. Yeah. We put up with his poppycock for too long and frankly, set up with him. So Eric Adler, if you're listening, we can't wait.
We're going to host some co-host trials. Eric, you're at the top. But if anybody else is interested, just let us know and we'd like to keep the old dynamic going. So we're looking for a real mark, like a real punching bag.
Somebody who can really go to town on as it were. Yeah. And especially if you have some like a dark past criminal past. Yeah.
We'd like that too, because we'd like to exploit it. Yeah. Very aliases, you know, in different languages and yeah, like, what was his his alias Carlos Danger? Didn't he go by Carlos Danger for a while?
He did that for a while till he got in trouble. And then he of course did that series of films that he thought nobody would find backdoor barnstormers, but I found it, Greg. So what are we talking about today? Aside from Greg, he's joining us like he'll be here shortly.
We have a small window. We're doing after three of Hamlet finally. Yes. We did our overview and then the first two acts within like two months.
And then we did the hiatus for like, I want to say three, four months now. Yeah. And who's joining us for four and five? Nobody for four and five.
But we're going to have some special guests. We don't want to announce them just yet, but we're going to have some special guests to do some thematic or more concentrate. So this is going to be, you know, between our overview and then the five acts and then these two other ones, we're talking about what is that eight episodes on Hamlet? So you're going to have plenty more to come in.
We got to keep up with it and get these guests in. So we've got some guessing. You think guests will do deeper dives. It won't just be limited to one act.
Yeah, right. It'll be thematic thematic episodes. Yeah. We'll do some thematic work for general episodes.
Okay. So Alex, set the stage quickly. Oh, look who's here and in a tie, no less. Okay.
Good, Greg. I don't think he can hear us in here. All right. We'll let him chime in when he can hear us.
But I guess I've been hoisted on my own patard. So what's happening, Greg? Alex, by now, it's evident that Hamlet has gone mad or it's strange. So between acts, yeah, so between acts one and two, very like a few months at least to see the past, right?
Between acts two and three, I think it's been a night. It's very quick. So I think it's important to think of there's been this period during which Ophelia has rejected Hamlet and not been very sort of warm to him. That leads to, at the beginning of book two, him feigning this madness, right?
Act three is following up on this. We have to think about sort of series of events, really sort of like a quick sequence of events. At three, we get these references to his madness, but it's they're kind of aware that he's feigning it. So Claudia says, and can you buy no drift of conference get from him why he puts on this confusion, waiting so harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy.
So there's a reference to madness, but also a kind of feigned madness that then Gilden Stern, so Rosenkren says he does confense he feels himself distracted, but from what cause he will by no means speak, meaning he's kind of aware of so he's somewhat disturbed, but also in control of the Gilden Stern calls this a crafty madness and they can't bring him to confess the state. So I think I think Hamlet is feigning madness, as he said, he would at the end of acts one, but he's also sort of letting them know that he's in control of it somewhat. And I think this is actually what makes him more dangerous. If you were just crazy, you lock him up with the fact that he seems to have his wits about him to a certain degree, makes him in a way more dangerous and more of a threat.
And so Claudia says now really concerned about his situation. I have a quick question about that. We perceive him as the reader says, growing increasingly more threatening. Do you think that the king and queen or the king perceives the threat?
He consents to see the play that Hamlet's going to put on. He rather than kill Hamlet, he says, I'll just send him to England. And as the threat is fine, that is a plot to kill it. But before that, well, so I think he's hopeful with the play that there might be only he's coming around because he seems to obviously be wrapped up in the theater.
And so maybe this is a sign that he's getting back to his old sort of self, though, when Claudia sees the king in the plays, nephew come up to murder him. He's of course, Word of the kids, perhaps Hamlet's going to do it. So at that point, he's definitely going to go through with England, though he's already packed some dispatches. That's already been done.
So it seems like he's already trying to kill him, I think at the beginning of acts. Greg, you were saying, not your head or want to say something. But he's going great. No, that's it.
Hey, is it is that is Gertrude? Do you think that Gertrude is in on it? Or he's the king has a tight rope to walk, right? I mean, he's trying to get rid of Hamlet.
But at the same time, demonstrate to Gertrude that he's, I don't know, attentive to the boys maladies, if he is psychologically infirm. That's why we have to kill him. I mean, away from from from Denver. Yeah.
Okay. And using the king of England on some pretense, you know, it's it's all designed to but Gertrude to be clear is knocking on this. No, I don't think so either. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think so either. Yeah. Was that?
True to you and on. Yeah, true to you. I forgot about that. Yeah.
And at the end of act three, I think Gertrude is sort of somewhat when when when Hamlet puts her into this guilty situation and she feels the weight of her own guilt, I think she's somewhat grateful to Hamlet and she's much warmer to him in act five, for example. So I think there's an interesting mother will get to this in the final scene. I don't think she's as obviously as cold towards him. So scene one, we get Hamlet's fourth soliloquy.
And I'll just I think I pointed this out when we talked about act too many moons ago, but scene act two ends with a soliloquy. So we're getting as far as Hamlet speeches are concerned, two soliloquies back to back. And so the question is, what has happened between these that would want another soliloquy? Well, I'll say this, the end of act two involved him deciding that he's going to turn this performance into a way to test Claudius.
And then at some point after that, he sent for a message to Claudius, it seems like via Polonius to say, Hey, come attend this performance as well. And it seems like Hamlet is now gaining some kind of resoluteness that he might have to now that he's decided to do this, make a decision about what to do. And so the fourth soliloquy, which is his, which is his most famous one that to be honest, soliloquy, is I think exploring that question that's now starting to arise. One other thing just to point out that I think is important from the beginning of scene one is that Polonius says, as Polonius and Claudius are going to hide behind the screen and sort of watch what's going on with Hamlet and Ophelia, which means that they they might actually witness the fourth soliloquy.
We don't we don't know the staging, he could be off to one side and become him, but he could be that Hamlet has walked up to it and then it's gonna approach it. We don't know. But right before that, Polonius says to Ophelia and to Claudius, we are off to blame in this, his too much proved that with devotions visage, so looking like they're devoted in the sense of being sort of holy and innocent and kind, with devotions visage and pious action, we do sugar or the devil himself. So appear all faith, all humanity, all of high days, very Machiavellian, but inside your head.
Yeah, which leads Claudius in an aside to say to himself, oh, tis too true. How smart a lash that speech does give my conscious. So there's a sense of guilt, okay, which means that when he hears Hamlet soliloquy, which is exploring the same issue, right, whether to be resolute in action to take action like a Machiavellian prince, let's say, or to be holy and devout and to restrain and wait for God's justice. That's I think a really important because by the time we get to scene four, we get a very, sorry, scene three, we get a very similar situation where Claudius is himself caught in that same situation, right, of torn between between, you could say, a kind of revived pagan virtue and that kind of Christian virtue.
So I wonder, this is all just to wrap up this point, I wonder whether Claudius hears Hamlet's fourth soliloquy and whether this picks up on this guilt, and this is all building up to Claudius and soliloquy in scene three and so church. Yeah, in the church. And so you have from scene one to scene three, this kind of development of Claudius's guilt. I think that's really one of the big themes here.
Should we read a little bit of Hamlet soliloquy? I mean, this is, as you mentioned, like the most famous part of the play. Maybe of Shakespeare. Yeah, it's fair, actually.
Maybe of all Shakespeare. No, and you mentioned this Machiavellian bit in what Bonius says. I actually think there's a little bit of Machiavellian Hamlet as well in this fourth soliloquy. Like he's moving between Power Politics and Morality or Christianity and Machiavellian and something like that.
Why don't you read it and then comment on it. It's just you see, sure. I don't know how much you want to read, but I'll start at the beginning of the events. To be or not to be, that is the question.
Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, maybe Stosas and maybe Machiavellian would oppose this, or the Machiavellian alternative to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. So that seems to be the Christian or the Machiavellian response to what's going on. Should I just abide these outrages or should I take up arms against a sea of troubles? To die, to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is air to.
To the consummation devoutly to be wished, I'll skip down just a little bit. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long a life for who would bear the whips and scorns of time that pressers wrong, the proud man's contumly, the pains of despised love, the laws to lay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient meridly unworthy takes when he himself might as quiet as make with a bear budkin. Who would fartil's bear to grunt and sweat on under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose born no traveler turns puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. So there's right, why would one follow this Christian worldview but for heaven?
It seems right. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, it seems to me. I think that's probably the place to stop with this little bit. I mean, so he's dealing with a real situation, right?
When he in this sort of conflict about the meaning of death, right? So you'll take the Christian path, right? So Ray says to die to sleep to sleep, per chance to dream, like there's something in this sleep that's equivalent to dreaming, like a eye, there's the rub. It's like, yeah, like, yeah, I'll do it if I get this, but I don't know, you know, what dreams may come.
He's not persuaded of heaven. Yeah. And so, but he's also not persuaded there is no heaven, which I think helps explain his erosoluteness. Yeah, nor can he be because he's seen the ghost.
So he has some evidence of right. Oh, good point. Good point. There's some cause, perhaps for distrust of the ghost still, you know, and as well as like, you know, especially when he sees the ghost in scene three or scene four and Gertrude doesn't, which is a departure.
And that's where he gets assurance of the ghost a bit more. It's, you know, he I don't think he ever reconciles that adequately. But I have a question that is always plagued me and I know we already did this before, but so when he sees the reason this gets brought up for me again is because in this act, when he sees the ghost, no one else sees the ghost, right? And so before when he saw the ghost, the guard saw him ostensibly.
What they saw was sort of just a tall figure in armor with its beaver down. And so he doesn't necessarily actually see his father, right? And so I'm just torn. Is he actually seeing things supernatural or not?
And there's no chance or no indications whatsoever that the guards are playing a game on him, right? And the opening? Yeah, I didn't think so. Okay.
No, and Horatio takes it, who's kind of a skeptic boy, and he's lost immediately to the doubt of stuff. He takes it, it's genuine. I mean, this is a staging issue, right, which is how realistically I was watching, I forget who did this, the really long film version, and they make it look like a statue, like, and there's, and it's like hazy. So it's not clear there, but you could also just, I mean, there's no evidence in the text to make you think it's not just a person walking.
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Good exactly. It could be an act. It could look extremely real and be evidence.
I mean, the play directs us that he is a ghost, right? So right, right, right, right. So how realistic, so this is also the problem with Macbeth, certain things are more doubtable than others, but certain things are solid. Yeah.
Right. And then just curious that in the first case, everyone who has the faculty of vision sees him, and this one, no. Yeah. So that's, that's a difficulty, right?
Take the second ghost, which, or how hamlet takes the second ghost, because again, it's called the ghost. So you want to take it as a ghost. Sure. Sure.
Why the discrepancy and how does that affect the plot as I think it does? I'll say in, in, in defense of the Machia Valley reading, right, in scene three, when, uh, Claudia gives a similar position, when he's thinking about prayer, he says, uh, he says, I'll look up my fault is passed, but oh, what form of prayer can serve my turn, forgive me my foul murder. I cannot be since I'm still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder. So, uh, and there are some references to effect and effectual and even uneffectual.
And so there's obviously, I think there's this sort of Machia Valley late. Right. No, I think even, even when I read, right, fortune and opposing the sea of troubles, it's like water and enforcement is a river has to be commended. So again, to return back to scene one, I do wonder how, how Claudia's might take this, this situation where Hamlet is being more circumspect.
He's obviously worried that Hamlet is going to kill him. But before making that decision, Hamlet thinks deeply, whereas for Claudia, this seems to be more of an afterthought. And that afterthought obviously bears with it, the sin of, uh, you know, the, the sin and the guilt that he can't necessarily, he needs to overcome. And so I think there might be some sense that this is foreshadowing the later, later prayer.
Right. I have a question about, uh, Hamlet's, as it seems like we oscillate between, uh, kind of a madness that he can't control, uh, to believing that he is fully in control and crafty, but his decision to put on the display, especially with the murder of the king on stage, is always confused me. It's so on the nose. There's nothing subtle about it.
You can say, well, he wants his father in law to suffer and to, and to watch his response. But, uh, if he already surmises that his father-in-law is guilty of these crimes, in putting on that display only alerts his relative, uh, to Hamlet's knowing and seals his fate. I mean, if there was ever any question that his father-in-law won't bump him off. Now he means that almost a certainty.
So, so why the, uh, why the lack of esotericism on Hamlet's part? Who just explained the last one, I didn't see how that question followed. That's why I didn't clap more, why is he more clever? He's not well.
Yeah. Why is he hiding more? Let me just amplify that, uh, just to give Alex a time to try to accomplish the response of that. Like, I, as I jumped in and listen to guys talking, I wonder to what degree, I wonder if Shakespeare is showing us someone who thinks he can play mad and the playing, and this will lead into our discussion section too, maybe, but we're seeing too, but playing the part, he becomes the part.
Um, this is acting gradually take over and he actually becomes crazy, something like this. Yeah, it's, it's difficult to know when it would be. I think, yeah, a way to sort of develop what you're saying, Greg, is to focus on the fact that, and this is where it comes back. So, there's the conflict between pagan and Christian virtue.
There's also the university background and the book learning background. Right. And I think he's trying to decide what life to live similar to Macbeth, but he's also heir to that tradition through a strangely texturally mediated way, whereas for Macbeth, it just seems to be like in the water or something, these two traditions colliding. And I think that means that he's not just in the position of making a decision, but in a way of, of writing out his life.
And so there's, there's interesting, so he's rewriting a play to fit his life. It's got a kind of edible thing because the nephew's going to sleep with the, his uncle's wife, which in this situation would mean his father's wife, which is now his mom. So there's, there's a strange edible thing and there's all these textual references. And I think there's the, can you explain the edible?
What do you mean by edible? What does that, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does it mean?
What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? Okay.
And it's a good country level when you kill your father and you marry your mother in it. Shut the front door. Okay. Go ahead.
Are you implying a hammer? What's that? I mentioned, well, I mean, it's strongly suggested by that play situation. Then next time we see him with his mother, they're in her bedroom, you know, and, whoa, this is why we're not cracking the top five flossing podcast right here.
This is keeping us at this field farm, let's keep us out. Anyway, keep going. You guys don't even know the edit the story by a large, you know, I'm like, yeah, don't you know about this? The guy who did this, they're like, oh, I'll tell you guys, I want to, I forget who's in the story, maybe apocryphal, but apparently, you know, Leo Strauss was very gentlemanly and wouldn't curse.
And you for the story to do it. And like, he apparently, like, took great delight in calling someone in edipus in lieu of having to call him a mother effort. It's like that's so and so is a real edipus. That was my really terrible Strauss impression.
But anyway, sorry, back to the end of the video. We have to, we have to tell Alan Bloom that Mr. Nadine told that he was talking about the difference between the, the gentleman in the philosophy, he says, edipus is like a gentleman, which is when he finds out what he's done, where he's killed his father, Mary's mother, you know, he's so horrified that he cuts out his eyes. Well, it's not what Socrates have said if it happened to Socrates, and it's what would Socrates have said if he had done what it is done.
Go for it. I know the joke. You know, there's no Socrates. Anyway, go.
So he said, what would Socrates have done? He'd be like, you know, small world. But, uh, the philosopher. But yeah, there's a, uh, to go back to this.
I think when you, when you mediate your choice about what kind of live life to live through books, you end up being in the strain position of being both poet and character. And even so far as you commit yourself to that life, you start to lose the fact that you're sort of trying to reenact an old play. And so there's all these illusions to Julius Caesar. In fact, the original Hamlet story was a kind of based on Julius Caesar.
So there is this whole sort of literary becoming real. And that's, and I think it's kind of really relevant to being a student as Hamlet is and, and being sort of scholars as, as we all are of reading these books and trying to use them as ways to reflect on your life, you do end up trying to compare your situation to different literary figures. Character. So on so as a glau content.
And this, you know, you'll classify your students like this. Yeah. And that's, there's something very helpful about that, but also something very mediated and strange about it. But it seems necessary in a late time, like Hamlet's where you're exploring this tradition through those original sources that maybe is related to this famed madness becoming real.
Right. You mentioned Julius Caesar. I mean, come on, like, almost all of us probably I first encountered Julius Caesar through Shakespeare. And so when he mentions in scene two of Act Three, that Plonius had performed Julius Caesar, clearly some, he's got to be making some kind of intertextual reference there that is meant to shed some kind of light on Hamlet.
So somehow Julius Caesar helps us to understand Hamlet. Yeah. Yeah. I don't understand it, but yeah.
Okay. And, and Polonius says that Brutus killed him. Yeah. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, is a standing for Brutus.
That's what's applied in the next line. Yeah. And Polonius would be Caesar. So he's the one secretly in control.
Okay. And then I don't know who would be. Yeah. Well, I've also mentioned before that, like, it seems like the act of killing was much clearer for like Brutus didn't have the same internal struggles.
He still had internal struggles, but didn't have the same internal struggles as Hamlet. They were able to act more decisively. So again, for me, this contrast the Christian with the pagan worldview. So he has his trouble being Brutus.
Right. Let's bring out a theme because we're running short on time. We have us truncated schedule today. But in fact, we can maybe we can skip the nunnery stuff.
I think it's so much fun. It's a great pun. Anyway, go ahead. I find you don't want to talk about poor houses.
Yeah, horse houses were called nunneries and he's being poor, I guess, of the spirit. I don't know. And I think if I were a feminist, I would have heard this from some of my feminist friends that one of the problems with men is that they will bifurcate women, put them in one of these two camps. Like there's no middle ground.
You're either a whore or you're a nun. I assume that that's part. Anyway, I'm not a feminist. So you wouldn't say that.
You know, the gray air is a lot of women in the middle as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, that's true. Anyways, sorry to know one thing that connects scene two through four, and I think this also relates to Ophelia's this stuff about holding a mirror up. I think he's doing that to hold a mirror up to nature or to human nature.
I think he's doing that a bit with Ophelia saying, where are you really like? And it works. He then so he talks about this when talking to the players about how to act, he says, or step not the modesty of nature for anything so or done is from the purpose of playing or acting, whose end or purpose both at the first at now means both in antiquity and modernity, I think, was and is to hold as it were the mirror up to nature by which you go virtue, her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age of body of the time, his form and pressure. You got to do that well to show them.
That's what he's trying to do with with Ophelia in the last scene. It's what he's supposed to be trying to do with Claudius later in scene two. At the end of scene two, he says to in his fifth soliloquy, he says, I will speak daggers to her, his mother, but use none. And so he's going to somehow strike pain into her.
Scene three is about how Claudius has been given to reflect now. And then when he gets in scene four to the queen, he says, come come and sit you down. You shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass, meaning a mirror where you may see the inmost part of you.
That she thinks he's gonna stab her. Lease her to cry out. Lease Bologna is to cry out. He kills Bologna.
It's kind of funny that he dies on a misunderstood play on words or kind of inadvertent play on words. But then when he talks to his mother and tries to instill guilt, eventually she says around line 100, that turns my eyes into my very soul. And then a little later, these words like daggers enter my ear. So he has done effectively what he says.
I'm gonna hold a mirror up to Ophelia to Claudius to my mother and instick to kind of pings and pain of guilt in all three of these. And I think that's a really important part of what's happening in Act three as a whole. That Hamlet is somehow realizing through his own sort of working through his guilt that he can kind of produce this in these other characters. I can understand the desire to produce this in his mother and stepfather.
What's the fascination with Ophelia? She just strikes me as his kind of like, listen to Avril Levine kind of boring. You know, like somebody who dating high school turns out hysterical goes to Bard College or something. That's not a pun either.
It's for school that came to mind. But what is the fascination with Ophelia? Why put her through the paces? It just seems that this is, he's being mean.
My suspicion, I mean, I don't I don't have to work that answer there. So this just because I think he likes her. And but he doesn't trust women. And so, you know, you know, there's a special type of man that sort of treats them mean to try and keep them keen.
I think that might be what he's up to here. Yeah, I also think he likes the team. I assume that's a frase of the younger using and so I'm just going to say yes. So I know what it means.
It's a number of years ago, those, what are they called Alex? A pickup artist. Yeah, it's these guys that teach men who are unable to meet women. Hold on there are books that help those kind of guys out.
Yeah, I think one of their techniques is called nagging. And that's when you put the woman down to make yourself seem superior in her eyes. There was a very few something like that written by editor on the stone that kicked it up. It's a very lame movement to the extent that it's a movement anymore.
But but I also wonder if part of it isn't to protect her too. Like, because he's he's sort of not clear in his own mind of what he's going to do. Right. Yeah, I think if you look at act act one scene, two, it is first of all, he says, Oh, God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world, fly on it off.
He's an unweeded garden that grows a seed. Things ranking gross in nature, possess it merely. So he sees it as a garden that has some flowers in it, but very few that are just overrun with weeds. At the end of act one, Ophelia has agreed to ignore hamlet.
And then in act two, you get an even more despairing view of the world. Back to scene two, he says, I have of late, but therefore I know not lost all my worth for gone or custom of exercise. And indeed, he goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly framed the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air look you this brave or hanging firmament, this majestic little roof threaded with golden fire, why it appeared nothing to me but a foul and pestilate congregation of vapors, what a piece of work is made, how noble and reasonable and infinite faculties inform and movement, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel and apprehension, how like a God, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals and yes to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
So he used to view the world as this beautiful canopy with man as its crown that can contemplate it. And Hamlet, who is the son of the, who is the prince, who is studying has in a way achieved the peak of both state and man human nature. And then it's an unweeded garden. And now it's just vapors and dust.
And I think he's gone despairing. And so I think he's disappointed with Ophelia, you neglected me, like I had hopes there was still hope for a new generation. And so I think he feels slighted by her, and which means I think Greg is right, he cares for her on a deep level. And he's slighted and he wants to put guilt in her in Claudius in his mother, I think as a kind of revenge tactic, but also I think as a way to so when he says at the end of Act three, we're reading for today, he has this really revealing turn, this is around line 200, he said, he says to his mother, so again, good night, I must be cool, only to be kind.
I think he's found a way of reconciling pagan and Christian virtue by being the valiant and stiller of sort of the conscience, pious guilt and repentance. And in his success, he's found a way to be the sort of valiant. Now, the problem is that doesn't work when he actually kills and he wants to kill. Right.
So that's, it's not a real enduring solution, but there's a way in which I think he's found, I don't know how to put this, but something like a new version of the kind of crusader or something. Do you think that Shakespeare was plagiarizing off of the song by Nick Lowe in 1978, you got to be cruel to be kind here? I don't know that song, can you say it? You got to be cruel to be kind.
That's all I got. I have a bigger question, but I only leave us too far field, so if it doesn't work, we can table it. And Hamlet, you read this play and you get caught up, I think, in the politics of the personal, right, there, these everything, the orbit, the sun is Hamlet, almost the point we once forgets that there's a kingdom that he inhabits and he's extremely close to the center of power. So to satisfy his personal inquisitions, he destabilizes the entire kingdom.
Now, one might argue, well, the stepfather began that instability, but Hamlet top of pushes it towards its ultimate conclusion. And so I wonder how much of political wisdom we can safely ascribe to Hamlet as a character, because once he gets going, it's like he can't stop, even at the risk of crumbling everything around him. I'm not even sure that was a question. I think it's an interesting insight.
I mean, obviously, everything goes to hell. So he can't be that wise, but he's certainly like, yeah, there are limits to it, though. So maybe it is like, Reg, he inhabits this character to the point where it overtakes him. We've all had that experience too, if you work in a poisonous atmosphere, whatever culture that you inhabit professionally, or you take on aspects of that culture.
I mean, I think your larger point too, though, is I mean, it is strange the extent to which this play focuses on the action of one individual, when there are these big, broader political things going on. And I think my discipline, political science, most of my colleagues, tend to ignore the role that individuals play when it sort of looks at political phenomena, tries to aggregate data and sort of like a macro trends. And Shakespeare, one could reach Shakespeare to be disagreeing with that and saying that actually, individual human beings can play really outsized roles and events, and Julius Caesar, here even Hamlet, one guy can muck things up. I mean, a lot of people are going to end up dead and it's not going to be because of one person, or I guess, alternatively, because of the kings and ability to recognize what he needs to do with that one person, what colleagues should take care of.
And so, I mean, we forget, like, I mean, you've all heard these stories about something happening at the international level that did or didn't happen all because one person said one wrong thing or one right thing. And you just sort of think, good Lord, this is how the lives of all the citizens of these prospective regimes are all in play because someone was slightly about where they sat at a dinner party or something like this. So in a way, I think it's provides a good insight. And the way it can also be sort of, this is so so so cooperative, and actually, some petulant kid, I mean, look at the son of our current president and the sort of problems that he's getting his father's administration into, right?
Not my president. Well, stop the steal. Stop the steal. Just kidding.
Wait, wait, so steal it? Yeah, yeah, I encourage the steal. Encourage the steal. Okay, I have to say that, yeah, Hunter Biden doesn't quite rise to the level of Shakespeare, but he rises to the level of David, right?
Oh, he is awesome. In a certain respect. I want to party with him. He seems like he'd be a fun party.
You're your first most two out of three members of the thinkery would like to party with Hunter Biden. So if any of our listeners know how to make that happen, seriously, he's DM us. I mean, I never Biden from a few years ago. And actually, he did some stuff I don't count in this, but just in general, it seems like a fun kind of good time, Charlie.
Yeah, I don't count as I really, I really question his judgment, leaving his laptop at that. Yeah, that was the big strike for me. To me, that's his big mistake. But speaking of like, inadvertently tragic figures, like when you think about it, like the Biden family, like the good son dying of cancer and then the evil son sleeping with his wife and then.
No, I mean, I was somewhat serious about this, right? You look at politics in the way it seems to play out in these ways. And I think that's probably one of the reasons these players continue to have appeal, right? Because we sort of recognize that, I mean, how many families get to our part by something like this or?
Yeah, well, I also, I even think there's sometimes there's a kind of, there's a kind of secret sort of or like secret desire people have to live out these plots. Oh, sure. Because if you want to have a meaningful, significant, interesting life, looking for other things, or like what people will sit and watch, you know, so you know, it'd be great is that I could just sleep with my dead brother's wife. That would really, that would really be something because people will talk about that and then you'll, I think people do stuff like that, just simply to have.
So you're saying that Epstein, who Greg contends didn't kill himself, read the Tempest and he's like, an idea was born after he read the island. Or he'd be the master. Right. I looked up who bought Epstein's island.
Somebody bought it at a real song. It was because it was, it was worth about 60 million. I think they got it for like 20 million. And it's a guy who develops.
Did it include all the accoutrements that were previously there or those? Yeah, he was in everything. Yeah. Okay.
All right. So anyways, it's a developer who is, and if they had a statement, he's like, I'm looking forward to being the join the joys of the Caribbean to everybody with a first class luxury destination. And like, oh, God, this is matter so unscrupulous. Yeah.
Yeah. Speaking of scruples, how about Hamlet? He's not got them. Oh, he's got plenty of scruples.
Oh, okay. Hey, can you guys want a point, we mark a point in the play where you think he was so first of all, yes. Do we all agree that he's on mad? I don't think that's 100% sure, but I'm persuaded that it's cracking up.
Okay. Okay. I was wondering if we could pick certain one thing, Blitz points out that I think is really interesting is when he's off to England at the end of Act three, he says, the letter sealed and my two school fellas whom I will trust as I will adders famed interesting reference to snake bites, which is how it was said his. So he's think I think that's a suggestion that Claudia says up to something.
The letters are sealed. They bear the mandate, meaning they're holding it. I don't know what's in it, which is strange because he's higher in rate. They must sweep my way and marshal me to neverend, meaning I'm in sense, slave to them.
So he suggests, I think he's suggesting playfully the Claudia says up to something obviously he should know. And then a little later in the speech it says, to his most sweet. So he says I'm going to overcome them. It's his most sweet when in two line two crafts directly meet and craft obviously means two plants.
But what's interesting is he will escape on a second ship when quote unquote pirates attack the pirates come on the ship, all they take is hamlet bring him back to safety. So let's suggest this might be an illusion to the fact that he's already one of them. He's got a boat shadowing it. He's going to overcome them and come back.
So if that's the case, he's definitely in control, at least on a planning level. Now, whether he's doing something rash, I mean, he's indecisive for quite some time. So he's obviously still on the fence for some reason. We'll have to see why and what's going right.
We thought got the one more thing out there. Oh, yeah. I want to talk about how he, the speech he gives to his mother. When he asked his her to compare her father to her current husband, his brother, he seemed for online 63 or so in mind.
Look here upon this picture and on this, the counterfeit resentment of two brothers, right? So it's an image of them. See what a grace was seated on this brow his father, Hyperion's curls the front of Joseph himself and I like Mars to threaten and command a station like the Herald Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, a combination and a form indeed where every god that seemed to set his seal to give the world assurance of a man. So he's a man like a god.
Hey, God, you know, this was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband was versus is like a mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother, right? And that's a reference to the ear, right?
That he poisoned. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed and bend on this more? Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love for at your age. The heyday in the blood is tame. Like you can't be all hot and bothered. That line hurt me.
That line really hurt me just for the record. I didn't appreciate that. That's ageism. Well, I mean, yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I think it should be ageism for old ladies.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pill for that.
And waits upon the jummit. So he's meaning judgment would step from this to this, right? Since sure you have else could you not have motion in odd reference to like a kind of Aristotelian psychology or something like that, right? Soul is source of motion, but sure that sense is apoplex for madness would not air nor sense to ecstasy.
Exstasy was near so thralls, but it reserves some quantity of choice to serve in such a difference. What devil was it that thus have cozened you at hoodment blind? So you must be evil. It must be evil judgment, he said.
Eyes without feeling feeling without sight, ears without hands or eyes, smelling stands all or but a sickly part of one true sense could not so mote. Oh, shame. Where is thy blush rebellious? Hell.
If thou can't mutine in a matron's bones, meaning an old lady can commit mutiny deflaming youth, let virtue be as wax and melts in her own fire. How can the young do anything if this is what you do? Proclaim no shame. I think he's arguing because he suggested this earlier.
I think he's arguing that you must have you must have colluded with clients. This made me I on this, this is a new sort of reading for me. This reading made me think I think she might have actually colluded calls. Oh, yeah, I wonder.
I that's my that's my worry. And then she says, oh, Hamlet speaking more that turns my eyes into my very soul. And then this seems like an admission admission. I mean, at least of it just seems like she's saying it can't be sexual desire.
It must be your sense and your judgment. And it can only be the judgment of the devil. Right. And so why would you do this but for some sort of plot?
Well, it could be retroactive. I mean, she could have come to realize what had happened and reasoned that this is the best course of action. What's Richard the second that the beginning of the play where Richard manages to persuade the woman to marry him that he killed her wife or her husband, excuse me. And it seems to me something similar is going on there where the ones calculating like she did in there.
It's clearly she didn't have anything to do with murder of her husband that but that she seems to be calculating that she'll have no one to help her if she doesn't sort of marry. So I mean, I'm with you. I just I'm only trying to point out a possible alternative interpretation. Yeah, I mean, it could be pointing just to the marriage but yeah, I don't know.
I'm kind of conniving reason she asked. So I'm on the fence but I'm more inclined towards that view. Well, I think at the very least she can be accused of having remarried or joined a physical union before the body was even cold. Yeah, Hamlet would have accepted that right.
At least his antennas may not have sprung so high had there been an appropriate period of mourning. And yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. And so when yeah, so there's a tear between the Machiavellian side of her and the Christian side.
I think that's right. Sorry, correct. No, that's all I mean, I was just wondering how much time has passed because I didn't have time to track it carefully but one of the scenes there was an argument about how much time has passed and Hamlet seems to be minimizing the amount of time it's actually passed when he's talking to folks right? It's actually has more time has passed it seems.
Yeah, at least for the morning, maybe not well, anyway. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's been four months or two months. I can't remember something like that.
I think it's I think it's still been two months there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of double here like there's the two Hamlets and the two Ford and Brussels. There's the uncles are now ruling in both regimes. There's says off remark there's Rosenkranz and Guildenstern seeming fairly indistinguishable. I think they can't be distinguished somewhat.
There's a kind of strange doubling going on. And so right months, four months, obviously, is a double a two months itself a double. And he says like twice, two months at one point and stuff like that. So when he finally, when he finally brings this up and he gives her advice, he says, confess yourself that having repents what's passed, avoid what is to come and do not spread the compost on the weeds.
That's a reference I think back to act one to make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue for in the fatness of these Percy times virtue itself of vice must pardon beg yet curb and woo for leaves to do and go. So he's saying, I know I'm hurting you, but this I have to do and what else can I ask? And she says, Oh, Hamlet, that has cleft my heart and twain, which suggests that this is really work.
She's torn between her sort of Machiavellian decision, let's say, and her sense of guilt that this was not right. And it's in response to this, he says, I do repent but heaven have pleased it's so to punish me with this and this with me. He's talking about killing colonias. And he says, so again, good night, I must be cruel to be kind.
I think he realizes now I have a sense of my purpose in the world, how to reconcile these traditions and what kind of life I can I can live. And so off he goes to try to continue. So he's quite resolute actually for part of act four when he's returning back seems to stop there. Greg, you got to go to a meeting, right?
Okay, time to I think we can stop. I like it. I look forward to act for two more episodes on on Hamlet. At least we're gonna have two special guests as well.
You mentioned that when Greg was on. Oh, good. Two? Yeah.
Cool. All right, guys, I love you. I miss you. I love you more.